RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: What would my Nice Uncle Joe consider the WFH Paddington station boss who lives in Aberdeen?

My Mum’s Uncle Joe was the station grasp at King’s Cross, the closest factor to royalty in our household.

The truth is, his proximity to royalty made him fairly the superstar. When King George V and his entourage took the royal practice to Balmoral, it was Joe’s job to wave them off.

On the return leg, he could be there on the platform to roll out the purple carpet, resplendent in his ceremonial tail coat and bowler hat.

Some station masters favoured the topper — as worn by Sir Topham Hatt, the Fats Controller from the Thomas The Tank Engine tales. 

However Joe caught to the bowler, customary subject on the London and North Jap Railway.

Paddington station boss Michelle Handforth (pictured) is paid a wage of £300,000 a 12 months

‘My Mum’s Uncle Joe was the station grasp at King’s Cross, the closest factor to royalty in our household,’ Richard Littlejohn stated

He took his work significantly. Again then the station grasp was a revered pillar of the neighborhood, like financial institution managers and native bobbies — all now a vanishing, if not already vanished, breed. 

Station masters have gone the way in which of railway ticket places of work, Excessive Road financial institution branches and police stations as price range cuts, bone-idleness and the egocentric Working From Dwelling curse have taken root.

Truly, Uncle Joe just about did earn a living from home. Extra precisely, on his personal doorstep. He lived in an LNER firm home on the Caledonian Highway, North London’s well-known ‘Cally’ thoroughfare. The home got here with the job and was simply a few hundred yards from his workplace at King’s Cross.

Not that he’d have spent an excessive amount of time behind a desk. He’d have been out and about, greeting passengers and inspecting the troops, a reassuring presence, suited and booted, immaculate in starched collar and three-piece whistle. Assume Frank Thornton’s floorwalker Captain Peacock, from David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd’s BBC comedy Are You Being Served?

Funnily sufficient, it was at King’s Cross station that Mum first set eyes on my Dad, strolling down the steps on to the concourse. They have been each employed by LNER in these days.

Mum’s aspect of the household all labored on the railways. Dad’s principally labored the London docks however he took a job with the newly nationalised British Railways when he resigned from the Metropolitan Police, which he’d joined on being demobbed from the Royal Navy after the struggle.

It’s possible you’ll be questioning the place this nostalgic meandering by means of Littlejohn’s Misplaced World is main, other than the truth that, within the immortal phrases of Michael Parkinson, you meet a greater class of individual down Reminiscence Lane.

I considered Uncle Joe once I examine Michelle Handforth, the lady accountable for Paddington railway station, 5 stops and ten minutes from King’s Cross on the Tube.

Michelle Handforth, 60, lives in Aberdeen, 524 miles away from Paddington station (pictured) 

You would possibly anticipate her to stay inside strolling distance of her workplace, like Uncle Joe. Westbourne Terrace, possibly, or Connaught Sq.. Good a part of the world, though admittedly fairly dear, ever since Tony Blair and the Arabs moved in.

Nonetheless, on a wage of £300,000 a 12 months, she ought to have the ability to afford a mortgage on a pied-a-terre in Paddington, even at in the present day’s rates of interest.

Not even shut.

Ms Handforth, 60, lives in Aberdeen, 524 miles away from Paddington. She will be able to’t even get a direct practice to work, not to mention stroll there. Her rare visits to the workplace contain taking a flight to Heathrow and hopping on the rattler to Paddington. Making an allowance for the same old problem of buggering round on the airport, her quickest journey door-to-door have to be not less than 5 hours.

She can also be accountable for overseeing companies within the West of England and Wales. Within the final monetary 12 months she claimed bills of round £10,000 for flights, together with two £536 return journeys to Bristol.

I am Helpful, fly me.

Ms Handforth was previously head of the Aberdeen Harbour Board and was employed by state-owned Community Rail in 2021. Her contract states she is allowed to earn a living from home with journey and lodging prices to be paid ‘the place required’ to compensate for the inconvenience of really having to show up on the workplaces for which she is accountable.

Community Rail says the deal is justified as a result of it must be ‘revolutionary and versatile to be able to safe the companies of nice folks’. Final 12 months, the organisation spent £188,000 on home flights for workers, moderately than require them to journey by practice just like the punters they’re paid to serve.

This WFH tradition and jet-set journey preparations may maybe be justified if Community Rail was a mannequin of effectivity. However its newest annual report confirmed it missed targets on every little thing from overcrowding and cleanliness to ‘station atmosphere’.

Community Rail’s newest annual report confirmed it missed targets on every little thing from overcrowding and cleanliness to ‘station atmosphere’

Maybe if the boss did not stay 524 miles from the principle terminus she is meant to be accountable for, issues would possibly enhance.

However Ms Handforth’s extraordinary deal is unfortunately symbolic of the self-entitled tradition of WFH which has grow to be institutionalised, particularly within the public sector, since Covid.

In one other growth, a passport officer tried to sue the Dwelling Workplace for not paying to improve his home wifi connection whereas he works from dwelling. The person, who suffers from diabetes, additionally anticipated the taxpayer to offer him with a mobility scooter.

You could not make it up.

Subsequent to this weird declare, Ms Handforth’s sweetheart deal appears nearly affordable. That’s, till you marvel what Uncle Joe would have product of it.

He lived a few minutes away from his administrative center and was on parade day by day. The concept you would run a London mainline railway station from Scotland would have horrified him. Joe lived on the Caledonian Highway. Michelle Handforth lives in Caledonia.

Nonetheless, conveniently for Ms Handforth, King Charles and Camilla are heading for Balmoral subsequent week. She may greet them there. I am certain she’d look fairly fetching in a bowler hat.

Sadly, although, there is no such thing as a longer a direct rail service between Balmoral and Aberdeen.

The excellent news is that Balmoral is barely 40 miles from Aberdeen airport. She may at all times fly there.

Time to battle again towards the Brexit bullies 

Our ‘buddies’ in Europe proceed taking their revenge for Brexit. The Mail on Sunday has revealed that Brussels is planning to pressure all guests to the EU from Britain to endure fingerprinting, facial recognition and intrusive background checks.

This vindictive coverage won’t apply, nonetheless, to the boatloads of migrants making their method illegally throughout the Mediterranean, given free rail tickets in Italy and unhindered passage to the UK by the French.

The European Union is planning to pressure all guests from Britain to endure fingerprinting, facial recognition and intrusive background checks

That is even though the undocumented arrivals from Africa, the Center East and past are much more more likely to include prison and terrorist components than Howard and Hilda on a two-week package deal vacation to Torremolinos. Ever since we voted democratically to Go away, the Eurocrats have been decided handy out a punishment beating.

The ludicrous restrictions on commerce between the mainland and Northern Eire have been merely our starter for ten. And, shamefully, our Authorities has let it occur.

Die-hard Remainers within the civil service Blob have been complicit as they try and sabotage Brexit.

It seems that UK diplomats, who’re imagined to be engaged on our behalf, agreed the draconian new border checks with none objection.

This pointless hostility is all one-way. French customs and immigration topic British travellers to pettifogging scrutiny and forms. But we nonetheless wave by means of EU items and guests with minimal ceremony. Financial protectionism is in no person’s curiosity. However it’s time we began to retaliate.

If you happen to’ve travelled again by means of Heathrow currently, you’ll have found that regardless of guarantees on the time of the referendum, there is no such thing as a unique fast-track for UK residents, which ought to have been an early advantage of ‘taking again management’.

We’ve got to attend in line behind a whole bunch of passengers with EU passports, who’re nonetheless allowed to make use of digital entry gates.

If Brussels is severe about imposing Large Brother controls on British guests, we should always not less than reply in variety, impose comparable checks on EU passport holders and see how they like being in the back of the queue.

I learn a daunting statistic yesterday. There are actually extra folks in Britain employed in ‘human sources’ and ‘variety’ than in agriculture. 

These aren’t simply unproductive jobs, they’re counter-productive, a drain on productiveness and income. No marvel we’re quickly to be poorer than Poland and U.S. states like Mississippi.

Nevertheless it would possibly clarify why we now have to import international farm staff and the nation is quick going to Hell in a handcart.